Professor Asparagus background

I call myself a recovering academic…

2015 ….now I am a fledgling farmer, specializing in raw and value added products of asparagus and hot & sweet peppers. How did I get here? Well….in a nutshell I worked in academia for over 15 years focusing on the teaching side as this was where my passion lay, refusing to play the publish and perish game. As an activist since my early twenties, I challenged the juggernaut of the corporatization of the academy through my teaching and my service to the community. It was in the late 2000s that I realized I was no longer happy in this career but it took me a few years for this to really hit home. Facing a midlife career crisis, I knew it was time to leave post-secondary education, but what else was I to do. I was fortunate to be able to access a provincial government program which supported the development of new small businesses. So I became a small farm entrepreneur.

2017 … these past two years of small scale farming have now lead me to international development work pertaining to small scale farming and farmers markets. Follow me in my year in Lima, Peru.